From January 21 to 24, 2025, Dr.Zhanat Makhataeva, a Senior Data scientist at the Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence (ISSAI), attended the BETT 2025 Hyve Event, held in ExCeL London, United Kingdom. BETT is extensively recognized as the leading global platform in EdTech (Educational Technology) showcasing over 600 innovative projects under one Hyve. BETT aims to provide a unique opportunity for educators and innovators worldwide to explore and shape the future of smart technologies together.
This year the BETT celebrated 40 years further promoting its values of better connections, better collaborations, and better conversations among participants. 30000+ educators and policymakers worldwide came to the Bett Hyve Event to learn more about the latest innovations and trends in EdTech, access educational opportunities, and meet with like-minded individuals.
The Hyve Event on 22-24 January 2025 offered its attendees a wide variety of activities. Every day pre-registered participants attended the Table Talks, where they could meet and have discussions on educational trends, teaching, and learning strategies in the era of AI. In addition, Bett 2025 organized User Tech Labs where people could meet with leading EdTech experts (e.g., Microsoft, Intel, Meta, etc.) during the 45-minute hands-on workshops. User Tech Labs were aiming to help educators get to know the classroom tools and applications better.
On the first day of the event, a Kazakhstan delegation studying in the UK via the Bolashak program visited the Exhibition Zone and Dr. Zhanat Makhataeva had a chance to present them with the Aibike digital avatar introducing the ISSAI and Nazarbayev University to colleagues.
During the second day, the Exhibition Zone with Kazakhstani projects was visited by many parents searching for educational opportunities in Kazakhstan for their children and also many high school students approached the booth eager to learn more about education in Kazakhstan. Dr. Zhanat shared her experience of studying at Nazarbayev University and the experience of her friends studying at the Nazarbayev University School of Medicine.
On the third day, Dr. Zhanat had a chance to talk with product designers and representatives of the Pocketalk Team developed a portable device that can recognize different speeches and translate them to the selected language. During the testing of their device for the Kazakh language, they found that they do not support the Kazakh language yet. Dr. Zhanat offered to collaborate with ISSAI to consider adding Kazakh language recognition and translation to their system. The Pocketalk portable device was designed to help children with different native languages understand and communicate with each other in the common classroom.
During the BETT Exhibition, Dr. Zhanat Makhataeva presented ISSAI’s key projects, including a digital human prototype, Aibike, at the Exhibitor Zone. With neighboring colleagues from Korea, Hungary, and Saudi Arabia, Zhanat and representatives of other Kazakh National Universities met the Exhibitor Zone guests, explaining what their countries are doing regarding higher education, technology, and AI. Overall, AI was the main focus of the whole event, becoming the highlight of Bett 2025.
Together with other countries Kazakhstan also shared their projects and potential on AI to the international community attending the event. Dr. Zhanat presented ISSAI’s Aibike systems showcasing various AI models and tools developed at ISSAI over the years. Aibike can have a conversation with the users in the Kazakh language and uses ISSAI’s Kazakh large language model (Kaz-LLM), Kazakh speech recognition model, and Kazakh text-to-speech conversion model. This marks a significant milestone in creating a faster and more responsive digital assistive system that supports communication with AI agents in the Kazakh language and is tailored to the local language and culture.
Dr. Makhataeva commented that during the event, exhibition attendees actively engaged with the Aibike system. Users asked Aibike to tell more about AI in education, how she can help them plan their lessons, and what problems she can solve. Most people were interested in which school subjects she could teach, highlighting the potential of such AI agents eventually being placed at schools to support learning and teaching. In addition, people were interested if Aibike was already integrated at local Kazakhstani schools and if studies were performed to explore the effect of such systems on the educational outcomes and students well being.
Dr. Zhanat was excited to visit such a big educational event, gathering together people from so many fields all over the world including educators, product designers, leading tech experts, entrepreneurs, and future students. She received valuable feedback regarding the concept of the AI teacher from the perspective of the design from Mister Rodion Zenevich, the designer and co-founder of the Soft Felt Building Kit. Based on the received feedback ISSAI team will be working towards redesigning the visual representation of the AI agent Aibike as well as the environment where she operates:
“It was great to learn from the people testing the system, that they consider the system to be useful and innovative. Previously we worked quite a lot as a team to reduce the latency of the system that on the other hand directly affects the usability of the system. Receiving positive feedback from many human testers at the event was helpful for ISSAI to further improve the system”, – concluded Dr.Zhanat.